Friday, February 4, 2011

Go Ahead, Little Idiot, Shake Your Tail-Feather You Stupid Son of a Bitch

It is very popular for rock and roll bands today to have "merch." They will create and manufacture t-shirts and the like with their name and a logo with the font of a gay-club's sign, usually for the sole purpose of seeing hot girls wear them. This is not wrong, it's just an extremely-typical practice.

"Merch" kind of taints what I like about music-making, but that doesn't mean bands/my band shouldn't do it; it's beneficial when it comes to earning money on tour and all that, and can provide for some cool mementos for when you're around 30 and wanna remember all the sweet bands you saw back in the day. However, besides selling Bear Hair on the road, I have been trying to come up with some ideas for "merch" that are atypical and fun, and do NOT include WAVVES weed grinders.

1. I was considering avoiding the whole buying/manufacturing thing and having us sell our own clothes. I myself have far too many outfits (being an avid fashionista/idiot) and would be completely comfortable with selling them to strangers for a cheap price. Mainly because no one would pay top-dollar for more than half the things I own. This is true of almost everyone else in the band (Evan, I believe, has about 5 interchangeable bland-colored rags that he slides on and off every day), and we would all have plenty of different styles to offer to the handsome populous.

2. TeMp0r4ry t4Tt00z. Now THESE are important. For example, they are EXTREMELY cheap to make, which would mean selling them for a dollar each would mean we can only make profit. Plus, they'd prolly be badass, and directly after the show, everyone can have fake tramp-stamps. What's not to like? I'd like the design to be a woman's head being sonagrammed (how does one spell this word?) with an image of a baby bear inside. Sweet tats, bro.

3. Mugs. I guarantee you, these would be useful for all. DO YOU LIKE COFFEE/TEA/HOT CHOCOLATE? I can't imagine anyone saying "No" to ALL of these things. Another detail: we'd have our "mean mugs" on them. Just our faces, lined up, mean mugging on the mugs. Inception. These will be a hit; even if a band was absolutely terrible, I'd still buy whatever mugs they were selling. Just goes to show how terrible I am about money.

4. This one is for a bit down the road, and all credit goes to Danny, and a wonderful but now-defunct band called Detektivbyran. It would be expensive to do, but a band can dream, can't they? Customized music-boxes that play the melody of a song. For the baby-children. This can be done to almost any song, and I'm sure we would have a few that would be splendid for this sort of re-thinking. Bjork also featured music-box renditions of her songs from Vespertine on the Cocoon EP, and those were gorgeous; however, I believe she kept the actual music-boxes. These can be made to look so beautiful, and I have no doubt there would be some craftsmen in the world who would be willing to make a few and negotiate a price. Obviously, this is not something for the present time, but I love the idea.

I am trying to think of some more. I've excluded shirts for the time being, but we have a jillion ideas for that particular thread. Most of them are silly. We'll see what happens.

Two things for listening: video footage of the song "Burst" from our first performance at the Viaduct Theater with Loto Ball. This song is not on Bear Hair, but it will appear on the EP right after that, called Furiouser & Furiouser.



Last, but surely not least, the mixes for Bear Hair have been coming in, and we are more than psyched. We've been putting some of the rough mixes up on SoundCloud to give people an idea of what it's going to sound like. Keep in mind, it's not mastered, but it's still pretty boss.

The songs featured are "Knife-Throwing Academy" (feat. Brandon Lutmer of Joie De Vivre), and "Taffy Apple Lifestyle People", a song we have not played live yet! I've also uploaded a few extraneous demos, 2 of which were featured on the Tandem Shop Holiday sampler ("Burst", "Hermit Crab"), 2 of which are slated for other releases ("Three Dreams", "The Last One").

Latest tracks by islandofmisfittoys

Goodnight, you guys. I am writing this far too late.
-Anthony

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